CNN Executive Explains Debate Decision

When a transpartisan coalition called for footage of the 2008 Presidential Debates to be placed in the public domain, or released under a Creative Commons license, only one network quickly stepped up. CNN agreed to make all footage available to the public for commentary, republishing, remixing, or other uses, ?without restriction.?

"Jim Walton, who runs all of CNN.... said look, let's release it without restriction. It's important to the country, it's important to be able to hold these candidates liable for what they said.... Yes, we spend a lot of money doing these, in theory we own these programs. But it's not really about ownership, it's about what these people are saying who want to run the country. So we're making it available without restriction, people can use it as they wish, basically forever. We won't do that with much or anything else of what we make because we care a lot about our ownership rights and our copyright. But it seems that for the debates it's something that should belong out there for people to use."

YouTube and other video sharing sites are already overflowing with commentary and content related to the debates. Kudos to CNN for having the wisdom to place this content in the hands of the public.

Related Updates

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) safe harbors are a vital protection for websites and Internet services of all sizes. But thanks to a new Copyright Office rule, website owners could lose safe harbor protections if they don’t register online by December 31. And that’s not all: Hollywood lobbyists are...

A photographer and a photo agency are teaming up to restart a legal war against online linking in the United States. When Internet users browse websites containing images, those images often are retrieved from third-parties, rather than the author of the website. Sometimes, unbeknownst to the website author, the linked...

It’s almost too strange to believe, but a federal court ruled earlier this year that copyright can be used to control access to parts of our state and federal laws—forcing people to pay a fee or sign a contract to read and share them. On behalf of Public.Resource.Org...

There’s a bill in the California Assembly that we think would make postsecondary education more expensive for students. Not only that: we think that it would undermine students’ right to make fair uses of educational materials. To make matters worse, several states around the country appear to be considering similar...

Update 5:00pm: Zillow has released a statement saying the company has "decided against moving forward with legal action." EFF is pleased that Zillow has withdrawn its threat and won't be seeking to take down any of the posts on McMansion Hell. We hope that other companies seeking to shut...

Mandatory Filtering Proposals Curb CompetitionWhen looking at a proposed policy regulating Internet businesses, here’s a good question to ask yourself: would this bar new companies from competing with the current big players? Google will probably be fine, but what about the next Google?In the past few years, some large movie...

EFF, joined by Public Knowledge, filed an amicus brief today asking the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to revisit one of its worst decisions ever. Three years ago this month, in Oracle v. Google, the Federal Circuit held that the Java Application Programming Interfaces...